“All right,” Vi agreed, solely to buy herself time to think. She needed to protect the Caverns—to prevent people from entering entirely. If Fiera needed something to attach the barrier to, then perhaps she could usejuth caltto collapse the archway? If she did that, then—
“What’s that?” Deneya asked, taking a few hasty steps forward.
They’d crossed into another antechamber, smaller, but the crystals were larger here. They felt older. Their power ran even deeper below the earth, to a realm beyond Vi’s perceptions.
Deneya squeezed through the center of two massive stone doors, barely pulled open.
“What’s in there?” Vi called.
“I don’t know,” Deneya’s voice echoed back.
Vi and Fiera shared a look before they proceeded up a few stone stairs and into the final chamber of the Crystal Caverns.
Here, crystals spiraled outward from a center point. They were embedded into the stone and glowed faintly, a dull thrum of power brightening and dulling with every step Vi took around the perimeter. The stones at the edge of the area were three times the size of her, brought to wickedly sharp tips.
She walked to the center of the room, crouching down and running her fingertips over the ground where all the magic seemed to pool together. Deep below the stone, encased in a place that was only partly anchored in this world, was an evil she knew by name. Vi slowly stood, backing away from that deep and rumbling pulse that made her tremble.
“The doors will do,” she declared. “This is the source of it all. This is where the true power lies.” She looked to Deneya. “This is where Raspian is trapped and where no man must reach.”
“Raspian?” Fiera repeated, understandably confused.
“A dark god,” Vi answered, starting for the doors once more. She didn’t want to linger longer than necessary. It felt as if any moment the ground would crack and Raspian would reach through the mantle of the earth to consume her and all of Yargen’s power whole. “The one thing we must ensure is never set free.”
Fiera narrowed her eyes slightly at her. Out of everything, this was what made her skeptical. Vi finally found the limits of what Fiera’s mind was willing to accept.
“Let’s close the doors to this room and seal them.” Vi wondered if the doors had been sealed once before. Perhaps King Jadar had been the one to find a way to open them with his captive Windwalkers. “Denja, help me?”
“What about the other crystals? Those out here?”
“I think… the Crystal Caverns were originally just this room and, over time, the magic spread to take over the whole cave,” Vi mused. “The crystals are older and older the further we go back. But the crux of it all is here. This is what we have to protect.”
Back in the second antechamber, Vi and Deneya faced the doors.
“Kot, at the same time, then?” Deneya asked.
Vi nodded.
Together, they uttered, “Kot sidee.” It felt as though someone pulled a rope through her chest as the magic came toward her. Vi took a step backward, watching her glyph crash against the other side of the door in tandem with Deneya’s. The heavy stone groaned loudly, and closed with a heavythud.
“Will this work for your barrier?” Vi asked Fiera.
The woman was in a daze, staring blankly at the room they’d just been in. She took a step forward and, for one second, Vi thought she was about to ask them to open it once more. Vi saw the same hunger in her eyes that she’d seen in Tiberus: hunger for power.
“Can you make a barrier over the doors?” Vi asked again, gently resting her hand on Fiera’s shoulder.
“Wh—oh, yes, I think I can.” Fiera blinked several times, as though the world was coming back into focus.
“Show me how to do it.”
“I usually have the sword for it…” Fiera started uncertainly. After they’d sprinted across half of the continent, now was not the time to hesitate.
“There are a lot of crystals here. Perhaps you can show me the motions using the magic of those instead.” Vi encouraged her to continue.
“With the sword, I imagined the power imbuing the stone the Groundbreakers had built. It knotted with their magic and reinforced it. As though the sword was the pin holding every magical chain together.”
Vi could imagine it. But imagining something and putting it to practice were two very different things. And there were obvious gaps in Fiera’s summary.
“How did you do it?” Vi pressed.
